sin

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sine (“without”).^[2][3][4][1] The oldest Spanish record has the expected form Old Spanish sen, which glosses the Latin ⟨sine testibus⟩ “without witnesses” in the Glosas Silenses, and ⟨sin⟩ appears from the Cid on.^[2] Old Spanish also had senes and sines, with an adverbial ⟨-s⟩, and sien, which Corominas thinks a compromise between ⟨sin⟩ and ⟨sen⟩.^[2][5]

The regular outcome of the Latin word would be ⟨sen⟩, as in Portuguese sem, Galician sen, Catalan sens, Old Occitan senes and Old French senz, and Castilian ⟨sin⟩ is isolated in Romance.^[2][6][7] The ⟨i⟩ is unexplained: Menéndez Pidal left it so, Meyer-Lübke says nothing, and Hanssen proposed the influence of sino, which Corominas thinks far-fetched.^[2] Corominas explains it instead as a sound change of an unstressed word, the vowel being raised before a nasal as in según and rincón, helped by the palatal Castilian /s/ and by the frequent position before words beginning with a velar.^[2]

Meyer-Lübke, Gamillscheg and Migliorini derived Italian senza and French sans from Latin absentia (“absence”), and Wiktionary speaks of a conflation of the two Latin words.^[2][1][7] Corominas rejects this, deriving those forms and sense too from Vulgar Latin *sines, with the adverbial ⟨-s⟩.^[2] The Aragonese form sinse, recorded from 1471, goes with the Catalan and Italian forms.^[2]

In Latin, ⟨sine⟩ replaced an older sē or sēd.^[1][8] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *sn̥Hi and Proto-Indo-European *sn̥h₁-i, perhaps a locative, with cognates in Old Irish sain “different”, Ancient Greek ἄνευ (áneu, “without”) and a Tocharian B word for “without”.^[9] Wiktionary gives other proposed analyses, among them si + ne “not this”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is sen tiestes “without witnesses” in the Glosas Silenses, of the second half of the 10th century.^[2] The Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) already has the form sin and the sense “lacking”: „Vio puertas abiertas e uços sin cañados, alcándaras vazías, sin pielles e sin mantos” “he saw open doors and gates without locks, empty perches, without furs and without cloaks”.^[10][3] The Cid also has sines.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The three senses of today are all in Alfonso X's Lapidario (1250–1279): “lacking”, “besides, apart from” and, with an infinitive, “not doing”.^[12] The sense “besides” is not rare in old texts, as in Berceo's Milagros.^[2] Autoridades describes the same three uses, explaining me fui sin comer as “not having eaten”.^[13]

In the 19th century Baralt warned against the French use of sin for “if it were not for” (sin mí le habrían matado).^[14] Moliner adds the attenuated affirmation no sin “not without”, the negative command with an infinitive, and the phrase sin que with the subjunctive.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 950–1000 – sen in the Glosas Silenses.^[2]
• c. 1140 – sin and sines in the Cid.^[10][2][3]
• c. 1180 – sines in the Auto de los Reyes Magos.^[10]
• 1194 – sien in a document from Palencia.^[2]
• 1213 – senes in a document from Toledo.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X uses all three modern senses.^[12]
• 1369 – sen in an Aragonese inventory (una tavla sen piedes).^[2]
• 1471 – the Aragonese variant sinse.^[2]
• 1513 – Nebrija gives Latin sine, citra and absque as equivalents.^[16]
• 1516 – the first record from the Americas, in Darién.^[17]
• 1855 – Baralt condemns the gallicism sin mí “if it were not for me”.^[14]

Meanings

Preposition

1. without; lacking, not having: una casa sin ventanas.^[4][1]
2. Apart from, not counting: Son veinte euros sin el envío.^[4][15]
3. With an infinitive, without doing; not having done: Salió sin despedirse.^[4]
4. With an infinitive, a negative request or command: Sin gritar, por favor.^[15]
5. sin que with the subjunctive: without (someone doing something): Entró sin que lo viéramos.^[15]

Word family

• sin embargo
• sinnúmero
• sinrazón
• sinsabor
• sinvergüenza

Related words

• Latin sine
• Portuguese sem
• French sans
• Italian senza

Usage notes

No sin is an understatement for “with”: lo aceptó no sin dudas.^[15] As a prefix sin- forms nouns such as sinnúmero and sinvergüenza.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 254
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sin
4. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. sin
5. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sin
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6145
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7936
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. sine
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. sine
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. sin
11. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. sin
12. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. sin
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 118
14. ^ a b Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 656
15. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sin
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 417
17. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. sin
18. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 647